Monday, June 30, 2014

Takes 22 YEARS for survivors to come forward, Girls targeted from nine, boys from ten, Rolf Harris child sex abuse education video surfaces after entertainer found guilty in London court

Girls targeted from nine, boys from ten and it takes 22 YEARS for survivors to come forward: Chilling statistics of child sex abuse revealed in Royal Commission report

Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse released its interim report on Monday
Analysis so far shows 90 per cent of Australian sex abusers are men
It takes men longer than women to disclose their abuse
The commission hasn't decided on a national redress scheme for survivors
Has asked government for $104 million and an extra two years to do its job
By Sarah Dean and Australian Associated Press
30 June 2014

It takes an average of 22 years for survivors of child abuse to come forward and many Australians who have been abused still haven't spoken out, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse says.

In its interim report, released on Monday, the commission said on average female victims were nine years old and male victims 10 years old when the abuse started and that it takes men longer than women to disclose their abuse.

The commission, which began its inquiry into institutional abuse on 13 January 2013, said its analysis also showed 90 per cent of sex abusers are men.

....This is the opening scene of what is now an unsettling 20-minute long anti-child-abuse video that prosecutors planned to play for the jury at Harris' indecent assault trial before it was barred by the judge. Overnight, Harris was declared guilty of all 12 charges of indecent assault against four girls, from 1968 to 1986.

The video, called 'Kids Can Say No', was developed in the mid-1980s, when he was indecently assaulting young women and girls - including one as young as seven or eight.

Harris had commissioned and fronted the child protection video, with endorsement from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, after being inspired by similar programs in Australia. In the period when the video began to be widely shown in schools, youth clubs and health institutes in the United Kingdom, the court found he was also having sexual encounters with his daughter's best friend.